


open book, torn out page

by vox_nihilio



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Bisexual Ezio Auditore da Firenze, F/M, Featuring- Ezio and the terrible no good very bad life, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, One Shot, copious purple prose i need to shut the fuck up, ezio is the only tagged character but there's a bunch, ezio's family, idk if it was enough to tag them, so angsty like was I ok when I wrote this??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27899125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vox_nihilio/pseuds/vox_nihilio
Summary: Ezio is seventeen, young and proud when his daemon settles.Ezio is-Ezio is seventeen, youth gone and shattered when his daemon settles.
Relationships: Ezio Auditore da Firenze/Cristina Vespucci, Ezio Auditore da Firenze/Leonardo da Vinci
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	open book, torn out page

Ezio is seventeen, young and proud when his daemon settles.

Oriana settles into a big cat, in the style of his brother and father before him. Or, perhaps an eagle, noble and true, with the lift of air beneath her wings. His father is smiling, and his mother is whole. She stands like a pillar, not a crack in its marble. Gian stands in front of her like a grand portrait. Fredrico is laughing, his daemon Rigina giving a great lick on Oriana head.

There's a grand party full of beautiful women at Villa Auditore, but his eyes are only for one of them. Cristina, oh  _ Cristina.  _ Her eyes are a laughing brown and they fly together across the courtyard. When the night is old they fall into bed and twist together in the sheets. Mateo, her little dove nuzzles into the neck of Oriana as the pleasure spreads through them and-

Ezio is-

Ezio is seventeen, youth gone and shattered when his daemon settles

He doesn't notice at first- his eyes are drawn toward the crooked angles of his father's neck instead. The sudden _ lurch  _ in their bond is masked by grief and the smoke of blazing anger. The days after too full of training, and the pieces of his reality attempting to stitch themselves back together. Oriana's answers are blunt, yet as sharp as the strange blade Leo fixes for them.

It is later, heaving for breath after the man who killed his father is sleeping in red, that he notices. No wonder the crowds parted and muttered as he walked through. Leonardo's little golden monkey had been so curious with her current from, while his human kept glancing at Ezio with an almost pained expression.

Oriana has smoke-gray fur and yellow eyes. Oriana is the warning of countless fairytales and warnings. Oriana is a wolf.

Paula is waiting for them with the sultry cat on her bare shoulders. Her face is stone as she leads him into his room in the back of the brothel. Maria sits in the corner, slumping on Gian's broad, brown back. Her eyes are dull, and so is the fur beneath her body. Gian's antler are stripping, white hanging off them like the curls of a courtesan's ribbon. Ezio's fire lights again and constricts his chest before Oriana presses against him. The young man deflates.

He is too tired to hold the heat of revenge, nor can he hold back the mental smoke that makes his eyes water and clogs his throat. He turns his attention back to the quiet Paula.

"Oriana," He says, his voice raspy from harsh breathing and truths. "She has settled now I-" Ezio should be telling this to his mother or father first, but neither of them are _ here,  _ and everything is  _ wrong wrong wrong- _

"She's a wolf." He says at last, staring at the floorboards. No self- respecting nobleman has the daemon of a wolf. They are savage, brutal creatures that tear men apart. But he cannot help but feel satisfied when he looks at her. She is terrible, she is beautiful, and if he ever needed a confirmation that Oriana is a piece of his soul, here it is. He hopes the bastards who cheered when Peturicco's neck snapped saw what they did to his soul, the last son of the Auditore. He'd  _ make  _ them. Florence would be slick with the blood of cravens and traitors and-

_ Everything is gone, and Mother is missing, and I am the eldest son. _

And just like that, the rage sinks to the floorboards, and he is a scared teenage boy again.

"I know." Paula says. Her face has a mask of stone, borne of professional seduction and lies, but Zeno's eyes are shaded with as many emotions as Ezio feels. The cat jumps down and walks to Oriana's bowed head.  _ "Coraggio, piccolo lupo."  _ he says, and licks Oriana's head. 

It's the gentlest gesture Oriana has gotten since Petruccio's lynx daemon gave her a nuzzle of good luck. (There had always been much teasing over Ezio's daemon being the last to settle out of the sons. Even his father's daemon, Julietta, had settled by age 16. No one teased Petruccio, his daemon had settled at age 10 and all the boy had to show for it was a mysterious quirk of the mouth, and eyes far too old for his age.) Ezio has to fight the tears behind his eyes. The wolf barely gives a smile before patting to Ezio and pressing her head into his leg.

*

He carries their gold dusted bodies to the river's edge. Christina- bless her, waits in the gondola. She's scared and grief-stricken (a prospective bride always needs good relations with her groom's family, or at least that's what Maria had told her with a twinkle in her smile one sunny afternoon) but strong and  _ god  _ does he  _ love _ her _.  _ Mateo stares with wide eyes at Oriana's form, but the fear is gone quickly and Cristina's dove nestles between Oriana's shoulder blades.

When the echo of a funeral is done, he turns to her. "I want you to come with me." Ezio says.

She says no. And Ezio expected this, but that doesn’t stop him from slumping his shoulders. Her little dove coos and buries his head into Oriana's fur before fluttering to Cristina's shoulder. They kiss one last time, and it holds goodbye for everything that could have been.

Ezio runs and pretends he can't feel Oriana's howl clawing his throat.

*

Mario bursts into Ezio's life like a Monteriggioni cannon, his badger daemon snarling beside him. They go to a city full of crumbling stone and forgotten glory. Maria is settled into a bedroom with plenty of sunlight and a good bed. Gian follows, stiff and still with none of his former grace. Throughout the years that follow, Ezio brings feathers and holds her hand with Oriana laying down next to the daimon who named her. Gian doesn’t ever move, and sometimes Ezio can spot dust flecking off his threadbare pelt. 

Claudia and Enric, her ever shifting daemon, are quiet and grieving at first but that does not last for long.

Ezio and Oriana build the villa into a home to be proud of, but they are never in it. They don't even carry the name of Monteriggioni, just the name of the city that fed them to the maw of wolves.

*

Ezio is older now. He does not pray after every kill anymore. Oriana's pelt is crisscrossed with past victories, past failures. Ezio is covered with even more. Leo's monkey holds her close when they meet, never quite letting go. He, like his human, traces the ravaged skin with gentle curiosity.

"How do the guards not see her?" Leo whispers, his sky eyes flickering in the moonlight. The night was cool, the windows left free. "She must be recognizable by now Ezio, surely."

"They do not ponder over her survival, they worry about theirs."

"I have theories." Leo says while he kisses Ezio's face. His freckled hand strokes Oriana's fur. "On the nature of daemons. Who they are, where they really come from-"

"Leo, please." Ezio dreams of an eagle, and arabic words explaining the horrors of dust and power. Leo in his limited innocence need not know of such things. "Not tonight." He kisses a freckled throat and smiles when a rumble passes through it.

Venice is different from clueless Florentine nights and longings. So it goes.

*

One day, early in his apprenticeship to death, he comes back to find a snake in the place of his sister's daemon. It's beautiful without denial. Elegant black scales and narrowed yellowed eyes.

"I am Monteriggioni now." Claudia says while holding the finance book. She looks grown with the snake around her neck and lines on her face. Ezio plays the proud brother, but mourns later that night for missing the rite of passage for his final sibling.

*

Ezio plays the grim reaper of corrupted souls for a good twenty years before he finds the apple.

Monteriggioni, and all that it means for the Auditore family, crumbles in one night. Mario's feisty badger lays on the ground next to her human's stumbling feet. Panting and yelping at the soldiers that come near.

Ceasre waltzes in as if he hasn't destroyed decades of work and joy and next to him is stalks a…

Ezio knows what a wolf can mean, what a wolf represents in a person. He'd never met another daimon with Oriana's form. But Ceasre is hellbent on destroying his world even further. The son of the pope has a wolf with cloud white fur standing beside him. She is terrible, she is beautiful, and if he ever needed a confirmation that he would never find peace again, here it stands.

Ezio falls into Mario’s blood and dust when a hole rips through his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> Ezio: Oriana: Apennine wolf
> 
> Claudia: Enric: Snake
> 
> Maria: Gian: Roe Deer
> 
> Petruccio: Eurasian Lynx
> 
> Giovanni Auditore: Julietta: Lion
> 
> Paula: Zeno: Cat
> 
> Federico: Leopard 
> 
> Mario: Badger
> 
> Leonardo: Luciano: Golden Monkey
> 
> Ceasere: Apennine Wolf
> 
> I wrote this years ago. I think I need to watch something actually happy for once.


End file.
